By Jill Colvin and Olivia Scheck
DNAinfo Reporter/Producers
MANHATTAN — An 83-year-old nun crossing the street with her nurse's aide was struck and killed by two robbery suspects in a getaway car fleeing police on Lenox Avenue Tuesday morning, police and witnesses said.
Sister Mary Celine Graham and her aide, 58-year-old Patricia Cruz, were among six people injured when the fleeing blue Chrysler Pacifica collided with a silver Honda Odyssey and went into a tailspin at the corner of West 122nd Street.
Witnesses said the Pacifica was being chased by two police cruisers, an NYPD van and a police scooter in the moments before the 9:40 a.m. crash.
Sister Graham, who became a nun with the Franciscan Handmaids of Mary at age 22, spent her life taking care of preschool students including those at the St. Benedict’s Day Nursery in Harlem and the Camp St. Edward in Staten Island, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York said. She'd recently begun suffering Parkinsons disease,
She was declared dead on arrival at Harlem Hospital. Her bent cane was discovered lying on the ground next to her, a witness said.
"It was terrible — all you saw was bodies lying all over the place," a witness, Julie Wells, 58, said after the crash.
Police arrested William Robbins, 18 after the crash. He was not immediately charged. Police were still searching for two other suspects who escaped on Tuesday afternoon.
The drama began on Lenox Avenue, between 122nd Street and 123rd streets, earlier that morning when a 21-year-old Columbia University student called police from his cell phone to say that he'd been robbed at gunpoint by three men who took off in a blue car, according to police.
Minutes later, police spotted the car on Lenox Avenue, near 141st Street, a detective at the scene said. They pulled the car over and arrested the driver on the street.
But before officers could detain the two men sitting in the back, one of the suspects jumped into the front seat and spun the car around with the third suspect still in the backseat, police said.
As the robbery suspects sped down Lenox Avenue toward the scene of the original robbery, they drove into the Honda Odyssey, which was turning right from West 122nd Street. A street sweeping vehicle was also in the middle of the intersection.
The driver of the Honda, a 55-year-old mom, had to be cut out of her car. The mom and her 15-year-old son were taken to St. Luke's Hospital, where they were listed in a stable condition.
Sr. Graham was remembered as a “selfless” nun whose entire life was devoted to others.
“She was a Franciscan Handmaid to her toes, in her selfless dedication to serving ‘her children’,” Sister Loretta Theresa Richards, the order’s superior, said in a statement. “She was always trying to make things better for somebody else.”
Sr. Graham’s nursing aide, Patricia Cruz, of Brooklyn, was recovering at Harlem Hospital with bruised kidneys and internal bleeding, her family said.
Cruz asked her family “to pray for her,” and does not yet know that her companion of a decade was killed during the crash, because the family fears it would upset her too much, Cruz' relatives said.
Cruz' husband blamed police for setting off the chain of events that injured his wife.
"If they weren't chasing him, this wouldn't have happened," said Candelario Cruz, 58.
Another pedestrian injured in the crash, a 26-year old electrician named Steven Phan, was also recovering at Harlem Hospital. Phan's brother said he was stable and had a broken leg.
One pedestrian refused treatment at the scene.
Ava Arrington, 53, was home in her apartment on Lenox Avenue when she said she heard sirens. Less than five seconds later, she heard the crash.
"It was metal and glass crunching," she said.
Arrington looked out her window and saw the two smashed cars, along with two people motionless on the ground in the street. She also saw a black cane with a straight handle on the pavement beside them.
"Oh my goodness, it was horrific. I heard people screaming, 'Oh my God, Oh my God!'" she said. "It looked very, very bad. Nobody was moving."
"It's so sad."
